Abbas Araghchi: trust in the US is zero; cooperation with Russia is unprecedented

Abbas Araghchi, the Islamic Republic's foreign minister, said in two separate statements on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, that Tehran's trust in the United States at the negotiating table has fallen to zero and that cooperation between the Islamic Republic and Russia has never been this close in the history of the two countries. The remarks came just as Pakistan's army chief and Russia's foreign minister travelled to Tehran one after the other to mediate.

Araghchi told the Iraqi television channel Al-Ekhbariya that the Islamic Republic has held three rounds of negotiations with the United States and that all three ended in military confrontation. According to him, the attacks came in the middle of the talks, and Tehran has concluded that it cannot trust Washington. He added that in the third round they reached an understanding with Donald Trump, but, he claimed, the US president did not keep his commitments for more than two weeks.

Araghchi versus Trump's assessment of Russia

The Islamic Republic's foreign minister also wrote in a post on X, after hosting Sergei Lavrov in Tehran, that Iran and Russia have never cooperated as much in their history as they do today. According to him, the two ministers' talks covered Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine, Yemen and economic and nuclear cooperation. During the same visit Lavrov had announced the gradual return of Russian specialists to the Bushehr power plant.

This position directly contradicts the words of Donald Trump, who wrote on Truth Social on Sunday, 18 October, that Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic, and had earlier said that Russia is not helping Tehran much.

Negotiating without trust and relying on Moscow

Araghchi's remarks coincide with the position of Masoud Pezeshkian, who said in meetings with Asim Munir and Lavrov that there will be no talks until US pressure, threats and sanctions stop. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Islamic Republic's Supreme National Security Council, had also said that enriched uranium will not leave Iran. Meanwhile, Qatar and Pakistan have proposed a new plan to release part of the frozen assets in exchange for a confidential visit by IAEA inspectors.

The Islamic Republic is once again tying its fate to Moscow, even though the history of relations between the two countries, from the abandonment of Tehran's allies to the Kremlin's behind-the-scenes deals with the West, shows that Russia's support has always been conditional. Meanwhile, the people of Iran pay the cost of the deadlocked negotiations and the continuing blockade through shortages of medicine, the collapse of the national currency and unemployment.

The Islamic Republic's foreign minister called trust in the United States zero and at the same time described cooperation with Russia as unprecedented.